Investors prefer passively-managed funds, Vanguard is dominating inflows, and most of the money is going into dirt-cheap ETFs. Millennials love ETFs, and the traditional mutual fund players are struggling to grow their own successful ETFs. All of this is bad news for the old-school securities industry, which relies on charging 1-2% of assets in annual fees.

Before the internet, the average investor didn’t have the tools to know if their portfolio was underperforming the benchmark. This shift in access to information has made it harder for actively managed funds to justify high fees – one of the factors leading to the ETF price war that is currently underway.